A few days ago, my friend Joey Michaels wrote a post about E/N which brought back a flood of memories for those of us who were involved in it back then and then Artfag made a top secret, invite-only Facebook group where all of us old-timers have been catching up and remembering old times.

It’s so funny to think about how little has really changed for me. Out of all 80 of us, or at least the ones who have been participating, I’m the only one who’s really still blogging the same way I did back in 2000. Every single day. I’m still on Camwhores (formerly portal 9), where I’ve been since mid-2001. I still post in the E/N style, I think. On both sites.

I dunno, I just never really thought about it before today, that things never really changed for me. Everyone else is off doing grown up things and talking about “the good ol’ days” and I feel like I’m still pretty much living them. It’s never really occurred to me until today that most of the people reading this post have no idea what the E/N scene was, let alone were they a part of it. People rarely believe me when I tell that that I started blogging, like for real, before the word “blog” even existed.

Back then, camgirls were smart as well as beautiful (not saying they aren’t now, necessarily, some are, but in a totally different way) and most of them were super geeks who coded their own websites by hand. I didn’t though, I used Dreamweaver which was notorious for writing sloppy code so even though I used it, I would have to often go into html mode and fix the code by hand, so I consider it a half & half thing for me.  This is an image of the main page of the last layout (I think) I coded and created by hand. I was so damn proud of it:

If you’ve never read my “About the Site” page and are curious about my site’s history, you should check it out. There’s a link in there to my first Angelfire site even. Remember kids, everything you do on the internet is PERMANENT! What’s so funny to me about my Angelfire site is that my version of a blog sometimes back then was to write on paper, then scan it in and post that. I should do that more often NOW haha We have a new scanner but I don’t know how to use it or I would totally do that. Also I was talking to Blake about this design just last week:

When I lived in Rob’s basement when I was in high school, on one wall I made this design, except in a circle, as a huge mural. I don’t think there are any pics of it but it was pretty cool and I was pretty proud of it. I was telling Blake about it last week but I can’t remember why, except I did say that I should draw it again in my sketchbook so it wouldn’t be lost forever and lo & behold, here it is!

I don’t like poetry. I don’t like reading it and I don’t like writing it, but after Rob and I broke up, I went through a brief poetry phase. Here’s one of them:

Piss Off

Go back to where you were.

Go back into her arms.

No one needs you here,

all you do is harm.

I hoped you were in a ditch somewhere.

I hoped for blood and gore.

I hoped that you had killed yourself and

your little whore.

I wished that you were starving,

And didn’t have a home.

I wanted you to know great pain,

I wanted you to roam.

I prayed that you had been beaten,

I prayed that you were dead.

I thought that you were staying there,

and you’d stop messing with my head.

But now you’re here and I hate you more,

Than I ever thought I would.

I thought that you had finally left,

finally gone for good.

I wished that you would disapear,

Or shrivel up and die.

But you’re still here living happily,

and I still wonder why.

Why couldn’t you have been a good boy,

And slit your fucking throat?

Nothing I would love better than to

watch your dead body bloat.

Can’t win them all I guess,

But I can always hope.

If you ever want to kill yourself,

I have lots of rope.

Hahahahaha!!! Isn’t that hilarious? I also think it’s funny that on my Angelfire site, I had a “PMS page“, which was basically the original version of my “Shit I Hate” page. I’m also still really proud of this troll story I wrote. If you knew the guy it was based on, you would find it hysterically funny too! :oD

More poetry; I wrote this one for Madison when she was first born:

Too funny!

But yeah, it amazes me how much and how little has really changed since then. Especially the latter for me since I feel like I’m still in the same place, doing the same thing as I was 11 or 12 years ago or however long it’s been (I started my first site in 1997, so how long ago was that?).  On the FB group, we were talking about “what if…” and wondering why none of us ever really made it “big” in the blog world and I still don’t have an answer. It kills me that people like Dooce get all this recognition for the same thing myself and several others have been doing better and longer. What makes her so special? What makes her more marketable than us? Why did she get a book deal? I don’t get it. She’s not the only one, I’ve written about the Mormon mommy bloggers before and that whole thing STILL baffles me.

Anyway, the trip down memory lane was a welcome change from the usual. Do you remember the E/N scene? What/who do you miss the most? Spill! I miss being pretty and having nice hair. Oh yeah, I still maintain a small webcam archive, which can be found here.

~*PLEASE DONATE SO I CAN GO TO ART CAMP!*~

PS. Another thing I just remembered is that a few years ago on Facebook, someone referred to me as an “internet celebrity*” and Madison saw it and was like “wtf does that mean?” so I had to show her my site and some of my Camwhores archive and explain the whole shebang to her. She actually thought it was really cool but now that she’s aware of the fact that there’s a relatively big audience, she won’t let me post everything about her anymore, which sucks, but I respect that. Wes knows about everything but my activity on Camwhores and he thinks it’s the coolest thing ever and constantly tell me what I should tell you guys about. “Tell them I did this!” he says all the time, like when I’m filing him or taking his picture. A total ham.

Okay, nurse Cheryl (ugh) is going to be here in 2 hours. I’d better get a bit more sleep.

(* It’s easy to be an “internet celebrity” when there are only 50 people on the whole entire internet haha)

Edit: Apparently Steph formerly of Delightz.net made the FB group, not Artfag and Steph wrote a really nice post about it which you can find here.

Edit #2: Here’s Artfag’s post about the whole thing.

Sunday morning. Only Wes and I are awake at the time I’ve started this post. He’s playing his new video game (Bolt, purchased with a gift certificate from the Playstation Store), I’m listening to a new playlist and talking to Korpsy on Twitter about miserable movies. Yesterday Madison and I watched The Notebook, which is the second most miserable movie in the history of the world, and the little shit didn’t even crack a frown at the end, meanwhile I was a snotty, sobbing, toilet paper clenching piece of shit. I swear that child has no soul. (The first most miserable movie on the face of planet Earth is Life Is Beautiful, in case you were wondering.)

Last night was pretty miserable. I know I don’t really post about Blake very often, but I’m really worried about him. When I woke up from the nightmare of pancreatitis in Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, I woke up to the love of my life being a changed man and I don’t like this change. He can’t help it, I know, but he’s not well and I want more than anything for him to be better. He needs to talk to someone about what happened this summer and soon, I think, before this change in him, this sadness, becomes permanent. There’s just no joy in his life anymore, he doesn’t laugh as easily as he used to, he mopes, all he does is work to avoid everything else…he just goes through the motions of living, he doesn’t actually do more than exist. And that worries me a great deal. Last night we just held each other and cried. For hours. Things are not okay. Not everything is getting better.

………….

For the last couple of days I’ve been playing with an idea that I want to run by you guys to see what you think. I think I want to put a 24/7 spycam in my office, overlooking my desk and part of the couch. I say it would be 24/7, but really we would probably turn it off sometimes, just not often. Really, the only time it would go off is if there was any sexy/naked private time going on, which I know ruins half the fun, but I don’t do sex on cam, never have, and there are legalities in place that say a cam like this couldn’t be sexually explicit if children were to also appear on it from time to time.

What you would see, on any given day, would be me sitting at my desk making art and probably watching a movie, possibly with someone (likely Madison or Blake), watching TV with me on the couch. It would not be riveting entertainment and it would not be streaming cam because that would be extremely cost prohibitive. It would be a simple, old school, 30 second refresh cam that would be on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, give or take.  We could possibly chat live on Twitter.

Now, you might be asking yourself why on Earth I would want to do this so here are my reasons:

1. I am creatively blocked in a seriously painful way. I avoid my office like the plague and when I’m in there all I do is watch movies and accomplish nothing. Maybe with an audience, I’d be more productive.

2. Maybe with an audience I’d actually make an effort not to be a scuzzy bitch. Don’t get me wrong, if this happens you will most likely see me in yoga pants and t-shirts 95% of the time, probably with little or no makeup, probably with my hair in a ponytail. I’m not aiming to look beautiful here, I couldn’t care less about that at this point, I mean making an effort to have clean hair. Changing my clothes more than once a week. That kind of stuff.

3. Maybe this will attract more people to my site and more people means more people seeing my art and maybe buying some of it. Also, I think from a marketing perspective that maybe some people might be more likely to buy a piece if they see the process by which it was created. Street artists have been working on this principle for, well, ever.

4. I think it could be fun to chat with people while they were watching me (and whoever else was in the room), live.

Now, do I think anyone will actually watch? I highly doubt it. I think the ship for spycams, unless they’re maybe nature cams, has sailed. However, I know a few friends would watch sometimes and that it would enhance our spontaneous Twitter parties and that could be really really fun. Really, the cam is going to be pretty boring otherwise.

The only drawback I can see is that the whole world will find out my big deep dark secret, the thing only my family and a few really close friends know about, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Really, the secret itself probably isn’t a big deal at all, I doubt people would care that much, but it is sort of strange and it will require an entry on the webcam FAQ I’ll have to write up to nip the whole thing in the bud.

So what do you guys think? Would you watch? Would you interact with me live on Twitter? Do you have any interest in this whatsoever? Do you see any drawbacks to this that I may be missing? (All family members have “signed off” on this, Madison even thinks it’s a good idea, Wes doesn’t care, Blake said he’d turn the cam off sometimes.) Oh and there wouldn’t be archives because archives take up server space and I’d really like to save server space for nicer pictures that I take with my camera. I would like to have something below the cam though, that said something like “3 people are viewing this cam right now”, but worded better. I have no idea how you would make it do that. Do you? I know how to make a 30 second refresh page (in Dreamweaver), so I’m good there, but I have no idea how to make a counter like that.

Anyway, just a little idea I’m thinking about. To make it happen, I would need the USB cable on my wishlist and another cam. Ideally I would use the cam I have now for the spycam and use the one on my wishlist for Camwhores, but if anyone has an extra *decent* cam kicking around that they would want to send me for this, I wouldn’t object. Blake says that as long as this thing doesn’t cost him any money, he’s totally fine with it, so this has to happen for free. (We have a little spare computer to use for this – at least temporarily, it’s technically spoken for.)

Oh but another thing about the spycam? If it bothers me, I’m taking it down. If it’s just eating up bandwidth and no one’s watching, I’m taking it down. If a family member objects to it being there, I’m taking it down. This may just be a temporary thing while I’m in this funk, I dunno. But I think it’s okay to try.

Last week Blake and I went on a date. Keith, my mom’s ex-boyfriend, sent us a $50 gift certificate for Swiss Chalet and my mom gave both Blake and I gift certificates for EB Games and at the beach they’re literally right next to each other, so we went and had perogies, cheesy garlic bread, ribs, a chicken type of thing on flatbread, a strawberry sundae and a piece of apple pie – all for 4 bucks and change! Then we went next door and bought Skyrim.

I was so stoked to get Skyrim. I’d built it up in my head as this awesome fantastic thing but the problem was, my computer wasn’t good enough to play it so we had to get it for Playstation. #FirstWorldProblem, I know, but the thing is, I really really hate consoles. I can’t stand those little joystick things you use with your thumb to move, it just seems completely unnatural to me. I tried really hard to play Skyrim on PS3, I really did, but in the end I just got frustrated and gave up. Also the game seems way too big. Like, I played for about 2 hours and barely got past character creation.

The other thing is that these days I’m having a really hard time justifying the playing of games when I should be doing things that’ll make us money instead. Or at least things that are semi-productive. I canceled my WoW subscription because it was just stupid to keep paying for something I only played maybe once every 2 weeks and even then, I was just dicking around, farming for whelps and sprite darters anyway; I wasn’t even leveling. My subscription runs out on February 6th so I only had a month left to play it anyway because I was paying for it with Xmas money, so no big deal. I saved us 15 whole dollars by canceling a month early. *shrug*

I don’t know why I’m so unmotivated. Depression? S.A.D.? Our sketchbooks for The Sketchbook Project have to be in the mail in 16 days, I have one page to finish (I’m not finishing my whole book) and I can’t bring myself to touch it. Dunno why. Argent’s painting has been sitting on my desk, about 65% finished, but I can’t seem to push through and get it done. I have a million ideas for paintings, I’m not at a loss for those, I just have zero desire or motivation to actually make them happen. I have all the materials (although I’m running dangerously low on canvases). I have the pictures in my mind. What the fuck is wrong with me? How can I call myself an artist when I’m not only NOT making art but not selling any either? Like tits on a bull, I tell ya! Squam cannot happen soon enough!

Speaking of Squam, my mom and I damn near had heart failure yesterday when they announced on Facebook and Twitter that the spring session was full/closed already. My mom commented on the post on Facebook and after a few grueling hours, they commented back that there was still plenty of room for the fall, so we could breathe easy. *whew* We don’t think our envelopes have even left the country yet, so hopefully they get there in time!

Okay I can’t think of anything else to write so I think that’s it for now. Blake awake and making coffee so maybe I’ll get him to make me a tea too, which I’ll take into my office where the most productive thing I’ll do is stare a hole into my cutting mat. Oy.

Edit: Blake scanned my colouring contest entry. The scan kinda sucks though. The ornaments on the tree were silver and I guess the scanner’s light really washed out a lot of the colour for some reason. Like, in the original, Santa’s cheeks and nose are rosy and the package at the bottom is actually purple and lavender but it looks white and washed out. Oh well. Here it is.

I used to be tho thpecial.

“Tell a girl she’s beautiful and she’ll believe it for a moment. Tell a girl she’s worthless and she’ll believe it for the rest of her life.” – Unknown

Today was pretty uneventful. Last night was pretty uneventful too. While Blake, Ronny, Alex and the kids went trick or treating, I stayed home and did a topless show on Camwhores since I hadn’t done one in a really long time and had the opportunity. Lots of people showed up including Belinda, Zombie Bunny, badbob, jojo and many others. It was good to feel supported by the community and I even made some tips! That like, hardly ever happens and was MUCH appreciated! You can watch my show in the archives, for those of you who missed it!

With the proceeds from my show, we’re going to buy a printer because ours is way old and out of ink and the ink is really expensive (if you can even get that kind anymore) and it prints really sloppily anyway, so it’s time for a new one. I need to have a working colour printer to print my grant materials with, so that’s what we’re going to buy.

Today I woke up at around 9am and did some internetting until 10am, but then I got sleepy because of my drugs so I fell asleep on the bed in the living room for about 45 minutes and woke up soaking wet! For some reason, when I sleep now, I sweat like crazy and it’s really gross.

Janice, the other nurse, got here pretty much right at 11am, which was when she said she’d be here and she changed my dressing, helped me put my binder back on and sat and talked with me for a while about my health, both mental and physical. I guess they get an abridged version of your chart from the hospital, so she knows what I’ve been through and like Siske, she’s amazed I’m still standing.

I made of much sterner stuff than pancreatitis.
I will be alive at the end of time, you just watch.

Tomorrow is Dr. Hanrahan and as I’ve expressed previously, I’m worried as fuck that the surgeon at St. Mike’s can’t drain the pseudocyst since we haven’t heard from him yet. I’m also worried that she’s going to make me have another CAT scan and blood work because that sucks and we won’t be able to do it tomorrow after the appointment because we’re going to have to rush home to get there in time for Siske to change my dressing and I don’t know when we’d find the time to get it done because Blake works every day. I wonder if we could do the CAT scan on Saturday since that’s at the hospital and the hospital doesn’t close? And maybe the blood test place is also open on Saturday? I have no idea.

My mom’s coming with us tomorrow, which is a good thing because I never hear what the doctor is saying and I need it repeated back to me later in terms I can understand, which my mom (and Blake) is really good at.

And we’re not gonna get Starbucks this time because last time I barfed it up within moments of being home. It was the best tasting puke I’ve ever had though!

And with that, I’m oot.

PS. Madison is awesome. She holds my hair when I puke, then deals with the puke bowl and she even cleans up when I spill water on my night table. I love the shit out of this kid.

Dr. Hanrahan said that the surgeon at St. Mike’s who’s going to drain the pseudocyst was going to contact us but that was almost 2 weeks ago and we haven’t heard anything from him. Dr. Hanrahan sent him my last CAT scan so he could see if he could even do the procedure with my guts all twisted up and out of place and I’m worried that the answer to that is going to be “no” and that’s what Hanrahan is going to tell us on Wednesday. The alternative to this guy draining the pseudocyst is to wait until my body naturally absorbs the fluid inside it, which can take up to a YEAR. A YEAR! And Dr. Hanrahan can’t do her surgery in the meantime, she has to wait until the pseudocyst is taken care of. If I have to wait a year for my big surgery I’ll probably lose my goddamn mind.

So that’s my current worry.

On Friday night, Blake got me a new binder which fits a LOT better than the one he originally got. This binder is actually a back brace that we’re putting on me backwards. I haven’t thrown up since we got it so maybe it’s working and maybe I’m getting better at stopping eating before I get full because when I’m full, I get sick. Anyway, here’s the binder…ignore the boobs, or not, they kinda got in the way of the binder when I was trying to take the picture. Also notice the sticky stuff under my boobs, I am COVERED in that shit. Oh and for those just tuning in, I needed the binder to squish my guts back in place so they’re aligned properly and so theoretically I should stop throwing up because my guts are in a straight line so my digestion should be better, faster. And as I said, so far I think it’s working. So here’s the pic:

In my lap in that picture is a roast beef sandwich which is the only food I’ve consistently been able to keep down. I have one for breakfast, I sometimes have one for lunch  and then I have a small dinner and to date I’ve only barfed up a roast beef sandwich once so that’s kind of a record. I’ve also been eating multigrain Wheat Thins which, if you don’t know, are better than regular Wheat Thins, and they’re working to help my poo issues from taking 4 iron pills a day. I was all excited for pumpkin seeds for that purpose but pumpkin seeds apparently make me barf so they’re out.

Siske thinks my wound isn’t draining as much as it was in the beginning when we switched from the vac to a regular dressing so at first I was getting daily dressing changes (which sucked because Blake couldn’t be here to run interference) and yesterday Siske said I can go back down to just Mon/Wed/Fri again, which is a very good thing. That means my nurse will almost always be Siske (yay!) who now comes in the afternoons because she does vacs in the morning and regular dressings in the afternoon which means I can sleep in (yay!) and Blake can be here to help out (yay!).  Oh and both Siske and Janice (my other nurse) agree that I don’t need the vac anymore so that’s what we’ll be telling Dr. Hanrahan on Wednesday: just plain dressings from now on, no being tethered to that wretched machine that tangles you up in its tubes while you sleep!

So that’s some good news at least.

The deadline for the OAC grant I apply for every year is slowly creeping up. The deadline is Dec. 1st for my category and have I mentioned how much I hate applying for this grant only to be turned down for it every year. Applying is a lot of work, especially when you don’t have a printer, so Blake will have to print everything out at work and I think you need 6 copies of each thing. Then I have to hunt through photos and come up with I believe 6 pieces that best represent my work and I have to size them and put them on a CD. This year, since I’m not working and can’t do much else than paint, I really really need the grant because we literally have no extra money for canvases and brushes. And I need a friggin’ printer. I want the freedom to paint anything I want back, like I had when I had a job, and that only comes with money.

It’s a good thing I got into Touched By Fire this year because I can put it on my resume, which will look better when I apply for the grant. My resume is pretty limited though, I’ve only got Touched By Fire twice, The Sketchbook Project twice, The Fiction Project and A Million Little Pictures. I worry that that’s too thin. Oh well.

Speaking of The Sketchbook Project, I’m going to go to my office and work on mine because I’m falling behind and I have more ideas than time. Gotta hustle!

So my brilliant idea of doing a series of photos from my bed in the living room hasn’t been going so well, mostly because the lighting in here fucking sucks, but also because really? Not much happens from my vantage point and my four-legged subjects don’t often cooperate.

After this post I think I’m still going to take pictures from the bed but unless there are some really interesting ones, I don’t think I’m going to bother cropping and posting them. So here are the first set of pics, you decide if they’re interesting or not:

In the pic above, you can see my loving husband Blake, the towel my nurse uses so I don’t get soaked with saline and blood while she changes my vac dressing, my barf bowl (because my stomach is VERY sensitive now for reasons no one’s too clear on) and my awesomely blinged out mouse.

More Blake, because I love him. <3

I bet I’m on Facebook more than any other living person on planet Earth. And I don’t even play Farmville.

Blake’s guitar. Mine’s beside it (black Hello Kitty Strat! that I totally don’t know how to play!) but you can’t see it from the bed.

A somewhat blurry Lucky laying in front of my walker.

Madison and Blake. I forget why they were both looking at me.

My living room night table. We’ve got (from L to R):
- My super awesome wake-up light
- Tweezers
- Bottle of Tylenol 3
- Kleenex
- The remote for the fan
- Floss
- My glasses
- My phone
- Glasses cleaner
- Glasses case
- (At the back) TV remote on a pile of books
-  Shotglass containing hydromorph contin and colace
- Freezie mug likely full of limeade or 5-Alive
-  Mirror
- To the very right, beside the mug, you can see part of my vac machine

Exciting stuff!

Vac dressing from my vantage point.

Wes playing video games on some website called Poptropica.

And last but not least, the window I can’t see SHIT out of due to all those damn leaves!
Although even if the leaves weren’t there, I don’t think I’d see much but a field.

So there ya have it, scenes from my bed.

In other news, this week I stayed home by myself for the first time while Blake went to work. He works from home on the days Siske comes so he can wrangle the dogs if need be and help clean up afterward or get things for her after she’s put on her sterile gloves – stuff I can’t just do myself. Then on the days Siske *isn’t* here, he goes to work in Toronto and with the kids in school, that means I’m left to my own devices.

I was really nervous about the prospect but I stayed home by myself for 2 days this week and nothing bad happened so I’m not as worried about it as I was before. My big fear was someone coming to the door because I can’t go down the stairs to answer the door and if it was something like a heavy Amazon box, I wouldn’t be able to take it from the delivery person and put it somewhere because I just don’t have the strength. Also? I wear a hospital gown 95% of the time, which is open in the back and isn’t the most flattering thing in the world and I don’t exactly want strangers to see me in it.

But no one came to the door and Blake put a note on the door telling delivery people to just leave the packages at the door, so I don’t have to worry about it.

My other big fear was falling but now I know I can get up if I fall (as long as there’s something to hold onto and really, that’s everywhere) and really, prior to getting sick, how often did I fall in my own home? Like, never. So why would it be any different now? It’s true that I’m a little unstable on my feet just because I’ve only been walking on my own for about a month, but I only fell once at the hospital and that was after I’d been walking on my own for only a few days. Sooooo, I’m not really worried about falling anymore.

My first day home alone kinda sucked because I woke up to no internet. I instructed Madison on how to reset the modem by unplugging the power cord but she DIDN’T FUCKING LISTEN (which has been a problem with her recently) and she pulled out not just the power cord but the ethernet cable too, which she only loosely plugged back in so long story short, the internet could have come back on 5 minutes later but I wouldn’t have known about it because she fucked up the cords. It was only by fluke that I hobbled out of bed and checked them myself at around NOON and found that she hadn’t plugged the ethernet cable back in and when I plugged it in, I had internet seconds later. I could have killed her because really, the only thing I can do from this bed is use the internet or watch TV and I don’t watch TV very much, especially not during the day, so I ended up letting the hydromorph win and I took a nap instead.

But then! After I woke up and checked all my internet stuffs, I got hungry and I wanted Kraft Dinner but it was on the 2nd shelf in the kitchen cupboards and I can’t reach that shelf without a chair. So I got a chair and I put it right below where the Kraft Dinner is and I went to stand on it but my muscles aren’t strong enough yet to propel myself on one leg and onto the chair. I was afraid I’d fall and hurt myself if I attempted to do anything further so I put the chair back and got a fork, which I used to knock the Kraft Dinner onto it’s long edge, then I dug the fork into the seam of the top of the box and pulled and then I could reach it that way. THIS IS BECAUSE I’M A GENIUS.

I feel like a moron saying this, but making Kraft Dinner took a lot out of me. And then when it was finished cooking, I took about 5 mouthfuls and didn’t want any more.

On Blake’s way home he stopped at the “good” grocery store where they make the best pre-made salads and he got me a caesar salad to have the next time he went to work.

So on my 2nd day home alone, I figured I was all set for lunch because I had this caesar salad where all I had to do was add the packet of dressing, the packet of croutons and then shake it up but after I did that and took a bite, I immediately felt nauseous because it was just so gross. It’s not the salad’s fault, it was a perfectly good caesar salad, it’s just that apparently I don’t like caesar salad anymore which is just one more thing to add to the list. Blake ended up eating it that night for dinner and meanwhile the only thing I could find in the kitchen for lunch that I actually felt like eating was grapes, so that’s what I had for lunch that day.

Again, that day was pretty uneventful. All I did was nap (twice, because I take the hydromorph in the morning, then again at 2pm and it makes me sleepy – most of the time I fight it off, but if I’m bored, or more to the point, depressed, I just let sleep take over) and refresh Facebook and Google + about 5,000 times. I also posted a lot on the Camwhores forum. (By the way, I have 10 free trials, no credit card necessary, to Camwhores if anyone wants them. All you have to do is comment with your e-mail address, one that’s never received a free trial before, and I’ll send it to you. First come, first served. An added bonus to these free trials is that even after it expires, your account remains active, albeit in a limited capacity. You can still see the cams, just not the full archives, you can still chat on the tagboard and you can still post on the forums. I’m not sure if you can vote, I think so though. The only thing you really can’t do is see the archives past 12 images or watch live or archived streaming shows. Anyway, like I said, comment with your e-mail address and I’ll send them out!)

I think next week we’re going to do the same as this week with Blake working from home on Siske days and going into the office on non-Siske days. I’m not worried about this at all because nothing’s going to happen. I’m still uneasy about being alone with Siske though because I can’t wrangle the dogs (what if one got out? that would be a nightmare!) and the least we can do is clean up after her because we appreciate what she does for me, although technically I believe it’s her job to clean up after herself. Plus there’s the fact that she’s basically a stranger and I don’t feel comfortable with strangers in my house at all, but especially if I have to be alone with them. Eventually I’m going to have to get over this because Blake IS expected to be at work every day, it’s just that today is not that day. This week is not that week. I don’t know when it will be, maybe the week after this one, but we’re playing it by ear.

Tomorrow night we’re going to Toronto to see Mother Mother. When I was in the hospital, I was worried that I wouldn’t get out in time to go to this show and then when I did get out, I didn’t think I *could* go to this show for a number of reasons.

1. The show is at Sound Academy which is a big but essentially shitty venue because the floor is level so if you’re short and at the back, you can’t see anything and with my walker, I would have to be at the back. There IS a platform with tables and chairs on it but getting a table is next to impossible and there’s a big column in your way anyway. Also I wouldn’t be able to stand on the platform because I need my walker.

2. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t be in the pit or even in the crowd.

3. I can’t stand for long periods of time and there’s nowhere to sit, period, let alone somewhere to sit and still be able to see anything.

4. What the hell would I wear? Because my guts are swollen and all displaced, I look about 6 or 7 months pregnant and I don’t exactly have maternity clothes I could wear!

But Blake being Blake found a solution to most of these problems. He called the venue and asked about wheelchair accessibility and as it turns out there is an area to the left of the stage that’s sectioned off specifically for gimps like me and when Blake explained that I can’t stand for long periods of time, they said there would be a chair waiting for me when I got there. Problem solved. We’re going to get there early so there’s not too much of a crowd and we’re supposed to ask for a specific person when we get there who will get me set up in the designated area.

As for what to wear, I think I solved that problem when I went to see my shrink earlier this week. I have this awesome pair of black, drawstring yoga pants that my mother-in-law got me years ago that I absolutely love so when I went to my shrink I wore those, tied below my belly because there’s a hose connected to my (normal) bellybutton region which is totally in the way, and then I paired it with a grey, v-neck t-shirt that Charlie got me from Old Navy (which you can see in my recent cam pics) and over top of all that, I wore this grey, knitted hoodie with faux fur trim on the hood that I have. Casual but classy. Normally I would NEVER wear anything that casual to a show, that’s usually when I pull out all my Free People clothes, but right now I don’t really have much of a choice. I’m fine with it, though. Totally not a big deal. After everything I’ve been through over the summer and the indignities imposed upon me, I honestly could not give an entire shit as to what anyone at this show thinks of what I’m wearing.

So, with all problems solved, we’re going to see Mother Mother tomorrow! And while I was mopey today and basically decided not to go, now I’m thinking it’s a good idea. And so does my shrink and Siske. My shrink prescribed me more Ativan, which I’ll get Blake to pick up for me tomorrow and with that and a bit of lipstick, I should be pretty good to go!

And I think that’s all I’ve got in me for tonight. Have yourselves a lovely weekend and I’ll probably write more on Monday.

So today I made an appearance on Camwhores because it occurred to me that there’s really no reason why I can’t cam from the living room. The cam just plugs into my USB port and I have an empty one so why the hell not?

Anyway, I took a couple of pictures of my vac dressing that I thought I’d share. This is the dressing over my cheese pizza wound (~*warning: that link’s pretty graphic*~) that’s getting smaller and smaller by the day.

I have a different nurse coming to the house on Friday and I don’t know how down with taking pics she’s going to be but on Monday when Siske (my nurse) comes to change the dressing, I’m going to take some new pics of my cheese pizza wound so you guys can see how much smaller it is. This vac dressing (and my supernatural healing powers) is amazing!

This is the vac dressing. The black part is dry foam and the white part is moist foam, then there’s a plastic drape over the whole thing. In the middle is the drain which has a tube that’s about 8 feet long that goes into a canister that collects the fluid from the wound and the canister is attached to the vac machine, which is really just a small vacuum. To the right (my left) is my bellybutton.

My bellybutton, totally displaced.

And now here is a dumb picture of me, just because I haven’t posted any in about 3 months.
~*Warning: I kinda almost died a few weeks ago so I kinda look like shit.*~

The bandage on my neck is where the trache was.
It’s almost healed and Siske thinks we can probably skip the bandage next week.

So there ya go. :o)

I had to go to the doctor’s this morning to get repeats on my codeine contin (which he raised by 100mg/day) and Tylenol 3 (30mg codeine/300mg acetaminophen) and Naproxen. He lectured me about taking so much Tylenol because it’ll kill my liver, which I’m oh so aware of but I don’t see any alternatives here, which is why he raised my codeine contin. That’ll keep me from having to take so much Tylenol 1 (8mg codeine/300mg acetaminophen, 15mg caffeine) during the month and then I have the Tylenol 3 for when I’m actually on the rag and wanting to kick puppies. So was that clear? He lectured me about taking so much Tylenol and then rx’d me…more Tylenol. I’m not complaining because he did what I wanted him to do, I just thought it was funny.

I have today off because I had to go to the doctor’s this morning at 10:30am (we just got back now and it’s almost noon) when I start work at 10am usually, and then this afternoon is metabolic clinic. But this actually worked out well because I woke up to an e-mail from Belinda asking our boss for Saturday night off because it’s her boyfriend’s birthday. I have to make up my metabolic clinic hours on Saturday anyway (Belinda works nights) and Blake’s gone to Militiagan for another funeral this weekend anyway too, so I said I’d take today off and work Belinda’s shift Saturday night for her. Then I’ll still have Sunday off, which, if I’m working the night before, I’ll probably use to sleep in and then play Sims Medieval all day. So it all works out! I had intended to work from whenever metabolic clinic was over (we usually get home around 3:30 or 4pm) until 6pm, which is when my shift usually ends, but I decided I’m not going to bother and I’ll just make up the hours on Saturday since I’m needed then anyway. That means that I may actually make it to yoga tonight, which is good considering I haven’t actually been in about 4 or 5 weeks because work + metabolic clinic all in one day is too many things for me, so yoga has had to go by the wayside until metabolic clinic is finished on April 5th.

Speaking of yoga, our teacher is pregnated! She already has a toddler, she goes to school for holistic medicine and she has a full-time job on top of teaching yoga, so she’s going to be one busy lady. We’ve signed up for the next session because I’d like to continue once metabolic clinic is over and done with. As I may have mentioned a time or two, I absolutely love yoga and I’m really looking forward to going tonight since it’s been so long. I bet she’s going to make me sweat…

Today at metabolic clinic we’re discussion our addictions. I am 6 days smoke-free and talking about smoking makes me want to have one so I hope they gloss over that and just talk about the addiction part. This is our last real class I think, as next week is our “graduation” and evaluation session. I’m not really sure what that means but I do know that I’m going to need to fill out my module evaluation sheets which I’ve been neglecting to do unless they’ve specifically asked me to do them at the end of class, as they have in some instances.

I’ve been doing the treadmill daily. The first day I did a total of 55 minutes but then the next day I was sore because my shoes are those Sketcher’s Shape Ups so I only did 20 minutes and I’ve only been doing 20 minutes since. In fact, instead of writing this post, I should probably get on the treadmill, especially since I’m at the very tail end of The Virgin Suicides and I’d really like to finish it so I can star Freedom by Jonathan Franzen since that’s Oprah’s current book club pick and I think she’s going to be doing the show about it sometime soon. I’ve never read one of Oprah’s book club picks while the book club was happening before and I’ve always skipped those episodes as a result, but this being her last season I figured I’d give it a shot, especially since I read in Adbusters that my generation doesn’t read enough Jonathan Franzen, so there’s that too. Have any of you read this book? What did you think of it? I don’t even know what it’s about, I haven’t read the back or anything and I know absolutely nothing about the author or his previous works. But whatever, I’m looking forward to cracking the spine on that thick sucker and I love that I got a treadmill with a book stand. Reading while walking is turning out to be something that I really enjoy. The treadmill even has a place for an MP# player to be plugged in and two cup holders that fot a can of Coke Zero perfectly. I’m totally set up!

Yesterday Blake brought me home dirt so when I’m NOT wearing my $200 hockey jersey or going to yoga, I have to start my veggies on the window sill. I have Super Sugar Snap peas, Napoli carrots, Thunder cucumbers, Parade green onions, Golden cherry tomatoes, Sugary cherry tomatoes and Big Beefsteak tomatoes. All I’m going to start inside this week is the cucumbers and all the tomatoes. The peas did fine last year with just being stuck in the garden and hopefully the carrots and onions will do the say. Last year the garden got overrun with weeds and I didn’t know what were weeds and what were vegetables so I couldn’t weed and the carrots and onions never grew. Neither did any of the herbs (that I know of, like I said, I couldn’t tell the difference between them and the weeds). This year I’m going to do herbs in pots on the porch, although part of me is thinking “why bother?” because fresh herbs at the grocery store really aren’t that expensive and we use frozen basil chunks for Blake’s awesome cherry tomato pasta anyway and I think they’re only $2.99 for 20 cubes. (I think he uses 4 in the tomato thing, maybe a bit more.) It just seems like, for the pain in the ass of it, it would just be easier to buy fresh herbs at the grocery store than tend my own.

Blah, I’m babbling. I’m gonna go finish The Virgin Suicides and get on the treadmill. I hope everyone has a wonderful day!

PS. Yes I know I need to get my roots done. I was going to go to the new salon here in town to have highlights put in, but I’m broke right now so I bought a box of hair dye today at the pharmacy instead. I’ll go to the salon another time and just get Blake to trim my ends with my awesome art scissors. No big deal.

Okay, to tread I go!

PPS. I can’t go to yoga tonight! We’re playing the Sabres and I have to tweet 100 times about how much I hate Ryan Miller! Curses!

Today was metabolic clinic day and I’ve lost 2.5 lbs and an inch on my waist. That’s 5 lbs and 3 inches lost in 2 weeks because the Loxapine I’m on to help me sleep (that’s an anti-psychotic) is giving me a total loss of appetite, but I see that as a good thing because I feel like I’m eating the way I did pre-medication. Before becoming medicated I only ate one meal and one snack a day and that seems to be how I’m eating now, with obvious results.

Today during metabolic clinic, Sherry told me and the whole clinic that she’d been reading my blog and that she found it uplifting and inspirational. I’ve heard that before, via e-mail, but never in person and it was a really surreal moment because she was so sincere about it. That made Marilyn ask for the URL to my blog, so I gave her one of my cards, but warned her, and the whole clinic, that if you come here, you’re probably going to see me naked. Marilyn said “that’s okay, we’re all girls!” which made me laugh.

And the reason they may see me naked is because I changed the Camwhores ads on my sex pages to see if I couldn’t snag any new customers from Steak & Blowjob Day (I didn’t) and I figured if I were going to put myself out there, naked to the world, those were the pages to do it.

Something that’s interesting to me about my involvement with Camwhores is that because I have those sex pages on my site and because I have a link to Camwhores in 5 places on my site, no one will link me. Other camgirls won’t link me because I’m not a pay site or even a porn site and the mixed media artists/women bloggers I know won’t link to me because of all the sex on my site. So I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place in regards to linkage. Not that I necessarily care whether or not people link me, very few ever have so it’s not like this is a sudden thing, I just find it interesting how the two worlds don’t mix at all and how I’m kinda stuck in the middle.

Speaking of Camwhores, here’s me today. I really need to invest in better lighting in this room, I look much cuter in person!

I just got the best text message from one of my co-workers! I can’t tell you what it said, but let’s just say that I had a really good idea for our admin side of things and he implemented it today and IT IS GOING TO MAKE LIFE SO MUCH EASIER AND CUSTOMERS SO MUCH HAPPIER! I am STOKED! Good ideas. I haz them. Just sayin’.

Soon my mom, John and Chris are going to be here to deliver Wes’ new bunk beds. The top bunk is a single bed and the bottom bunk is a futon. It’s going to be a tight fit in his little room, but we’ll make it work. He’s pretty excited about them.

And can I just mention that it’s 6pm and still way daylight out? That makes me a super happy camper. Winter’s almost gone! I looked the other day and my snowdrops aren’t out yet, or crocuses, but the daffodils are coming up nicely and should be out within about 10 days I think. And that robin is still hanging around our yard, so spring has definitely sprung in Sunnyland!

All I’ve really been doing lately is working on my two paintings (the mermaid, whose background I had to change because her pink tail turned orange when I crackled her, oops) and a pink fairy, whose background is what the mermaid’s originally was. Besides that, I’ve been steadily working on my first novel, which is about 40,000 words so far. Yes, it is “Cammity Jane” for those who were around for that and I’ve got to say that it’s coming along quite nicely. My friend Robert is editing it, my friend Charlie is critiquing it (I have to get him the new chapters still, but he’s in Mexico right now) and my friend Fuzz Decay said she’s going to lay it out nicely for me once I get to the publishing stage. I don’t know what I’m going to call it (“Cammity Jane” is just a working title, she was originally going to be a camgirl but I changed that) or what the cover’s going to look like yet but Blake says to just write the damn thing and to worry about that stuff later, so that’s what I’ve been doing. As I mentioned before, I hope to have it on Amazon by the kids’ summer holidays, but again, I don’t know if that’s realistic or not.

And that’s all that’s really been going on around here. I’d better finish this up and say goodbye because my mom and co. are going to be here any minute and I don’t want to be writing a blog post when they’re here. I hope you all had a lovely Tuesday and I’ll probably write more tomorrow.

In the meantime, have you voted for Ann Arbor’s Teen Centre Inc (Neutral Zone) in the Bank of Ann Arbor’s Sweet 15 contest yet? If not, then you should! It only takes a few clicks and it’s for charity!

VOTE HERE!

Thank you in advance! Every vote counts!

I hate these glasses.
I’d get new ones but Blake’s work won’t pay for another pair until next summer.